Game, set and match

July 7, 2008 12:47 AM

Serving an ace aside, what are the advantages of serving in tennis? Why is it so hard to break a serve?

Being a tennis noob and having watched a few games at Wimbledon this year, I'm wondering why most players hold their service game. Aside from scoring an ace, there is clearly some tactical advantage in serving even when a rally starts. Given the speed, returning a serve must be harder than a ball in a rally but what is happens once the rally starts, that servers generally win their serve?

posted by jontyjago to sports, hobbies, & recreation (11 comments total)

The server doesn't have to rush to meet an incoming ball, and is therefore better able to put it exactly where they want it to go. The returning player has to put the ball somewhere hard for the serving player to get to after rushing to meet it, which is harder to do. Most rallies are short, which means that the server's initial advantage doesn't get enough time to dissipate. I think you'll find that the longer any given rally goes, the closer the scoring chances get.
posted by flabdablet at 1:01 AM on July 7 [1 favorite]

Yea, what flabdablet said. I googled 'average number of shots per rally' and found a few stats, including this reference to a study finding the average number of shots to be around 4 or 5 each point. I would imagine that the server has a significant advantage for any rally of 3 shots or less (serve, hasty return by opponent, easyish hit by server) and many points would take three or fewer hits to end.

As an example of huge service games, this article mentions a game between Rusedski and Philipoussis where no point took more than 5 shots - presumably the receiver barely ever had a chance to recover from the first return before scrambling to get the next one.
posted by jacalata at 1:47 AM on July 7

Not sure how in depth you want to go on this topic, but this paper examines in detail the stats of service dominance at Wimbledon, and provides references to lots of other relevant papers.
posted by roofus at 2:46 AM on July 7

The short answer is that at Wimbledon, the men win 64% of their service points, so they end up winning almost all their service games.
posted by roofus at 2:48 AM on July 7

The secret to tennis is getting the proper depth on the ball. Usually, you can tell who's winning a rally by who's hitting the ball deeper on the court. Hitting a huge first serve facilitates that.

It's not hard to return an extremely fast server (in my junior days, we were capably hitting serves 110-115), but it's hard to return accurately. Most of the time when you return, it ends up being a chip shot that lands at the "T". This gives the server the most options when it comes to the next shot, and allows him to "step in" to the ball and generate the most power.

If you watched Wimbledon yesterday, you'll notice that this is why Federer could not break Nadal. Nadal consistently served to Federer's backhand, and all he could do was chip it back. Because of the amount of spin Nadal puts on the ball (he generates 2x as much spin as the 'average' tennnis player), he could not put the usual depth on the ball (which he's really, really great at usually), and Nadal could dictate his points serving.
posted by unexpected at 5:28 AM on July 7

As unexpected said, the server chooses the placement of their serves, meaning that the person returning will usually start off with an awkward and difficult shot, which gives the server an immediate leg up.
posted by Autarky at 5:39 AM on July 7

I've never played tennis anywhere but on the old SNES and the new Wii. Unexpected prompts another question:

Federer was 1 for 13 in break chances, which is brutal, but also intriguing. Federer earned those break chances by winning points -- lots of points -- off Nadal's serve.

Was Nadal saving his best serves for critical moments of the match?

Was Federer unable to close the deal?

Was Nadal able to rise to another level of play when the situation demanded it?
posted by notyou at 6:08 AM on July 7

notyou,

I would argue that it was a combination of both. Most of Federer's break points came on the ad-side- this is the more difficult side to return on for a right-hander.

Nadal's serve presents a demanding challenge. He doesn't serve very fast, only topping out at 110-115 MPH. (This may seem fast, but Sampras served 125, Federer serves 125, Roddick regulary serves in the 135s). What Nadal lacks in pure speed, he makes up in spin.

Because he's a left hander, the ball also spins the opposite direction that you would expect it to (his spin makes the ball move from right to left as opposed from left to right). Every time he served, Federer was forced to basically hit a one-handed backhand with a ball at about his head.

You can try this right now just by "airing it". It's really hard, and you can't do it with any significant amount of power, which is why Federer was forced to do that stupid slice chip. This strategy works, if you can get enough depth on the ball, but Nadal was too fast and too strong to let Federer get away with this dinky return. Every time Federer hit this return, I cringed.

It's much easier to take a serve on the deuce side, because you can use your forehand to hit a reasonable shot- but the nature of tennis - all the ad-in, ad-out, points dictate that you must close from the ad side.

This stupid chip shot is why I never attempted a one-handed backhand, and why there aren't that many players on the pro tour that still do it. The one-hander gives you more mobility, and the deep chip shot is an excellent approach shot, but in today's game, with hardly anyone coming to the net, it feels a bit...antiquated.

Federer should have one this match. He was playing smarter, attacking more, and being more tactical. Nadal's strategy was to basically retrieve every ball until he was sure he could win the point with his forehand, but he never seemed to actually construct points. He basically wore Federer down and out-hustled and out-toughed him, which is fine with me, because I have never been a big Federer fan :-P
posted by unexpected at 6:57 AM on July 7

Not to derail the thread but I really haven't been interested in tennis since the old McEnroe/Connors/Borg/ days and watching Wimbledon this week I was a little bummed that players just don't rush to the net anymore. It makes the game ten times more exciting. Was there some sort of study done that shows charging the net to be a very low percentage strategy?
posted by any major dude at 7:49 AM on July 7

Here's a cute overload interview with Nadal.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:59 AM on July 7

any major dude, two reasons:

1) They've slowed down the court surface to make it more hard court like. A lot of players have commented that its not too much different than playing on a hard court now.

2) They just don't teach serve and volley tennis anymore. When you're a young kid, you're going to play baseline style, retriever tennis. As you get older, bigger, and stronger- that's when you're supposed to make the transition to serve and volley tennis, but they way junior tennis works, you don't get an "offseason" to work on your game and transition to a totally different style. There's a big emphasis on heavy-topspin, power tennis, which is not suited for the slice, artful, serve and volley style.

3) okay, a third: the power generated today: today's game is about brute force. If you're serving 140 mph, you have even less time to get to the net. The best serve and volleyers (pat rafter, pete sampras, boris becker) would do all sorts of deceptive tricks to make their serve difficult to hit, but it would never be super-fast. Now, when you hit a fast serve, if the ball does come back, it's going to be really fast coming back, leaving you oftentimes behind the "T", which is basically tennis purgatory.
posted by unexpected at 8:04 AM on July 7